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Quotes by Inventor
"I have long felt that an investment by the Department of Energy of a million dollars a year for the next 30 years would pay a higher return than any other investment this country could ever make."
38
"In the larger companies, you have this tendency to get top-down direction."
38
"We need the kind of leadership exemplified by President Kennedy to just do it! But we must do it as good stewards, aggressively exerting control over the moon. We can best do this by going there."
38
"One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success."
38
"I was trying to perform as best as possible. I was a boy at the time, but worked well with the sickle."
38
"I tried a dozen different modifications that were rejected. But they all served as a path to the final design."
38
"It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them."
37
"An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots."
37
"People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line."
37
"Whatever the difference between brilliant and average brains, we are all creative. And through practice and study we can enhance our skills and talents."
37
"First of all, in terms of investment in Internet-related developments, venture capitalists - once burned - are now very cautious and are investing in areas that actually make business sense."
37
"In the earliest days, this was a project I worked on with great passion because I wanted to solve the Defense Department's problem: it did not want proprietary networking and it didn't want to be confined to a single network technology."
37
"No data on air propellers was available, but we had always understood that it was not a difficult matter to secure an efficiency of 50% with marine propellers."
37
"When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows."
37
"I am an enthusiast, but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine. I wish to avail myself of all that is already known and then, if possible, add my mite to help on the future worker who will attain final success."
37
"Well-arranged time is the surest mark of a well-arranged mind."
37
"If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false."
37
"Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged."
36
"The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer."
36
"Because you are a great lord, you believe yourself to be a great genius. You took the trouble to be born, but no more."
36
"When AI approximates Machine Intelligence, then many online and computer-run RPGs will move towards actual RPG activity. Nonetheless, that will not replace the experience of 'being there,' any more than seeing a theatrical motion picture can replace the stage play."
36
"We can't live any more in a world which is based on stuff and not ideas. If you want to live with the world of stuff, we're all doomed."
36
"The negative side is that sometimes it is beyond control."
36
"This circulating medium has a natural tendency to lessen by degrees the value and the use of money, and finally to render it powerless; and consequently to sweep away all the crushing masses of fraud, iniquity, cruelty, corruption and imposition that are built upon it."
35
"A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the patent office defines it. That's an invention."
35
"The state should, I think, be called 'anesthesia.' This signifies insensibility."
34
"The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us."
34
"I have continued to work at different things, and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something. I did it because I happened to be where I was."
34
"It goes to establish a just and permanent principle of trade which puts an end to all serious fluctuations in prices and consequently, to all the insecurity and ruin which these fluctuations produce; and to build up those who are already ruined."
34
"With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even if I knew that the machine had already been flown and was safe."
33
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